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Patent Issued For Podcasting

Posted by kdawson on from the next-a-patent-on-the-eardrum dept.

pickens writes "The EFF is reaching out for help after a company called Volomedia got the Patent Office to grant them exclusive rights to 'a method for providing episodic media' that could threaten the community of podcasters and millions of podcast listeners. 'It's a ridiculously broad patent, covering something that many folks have been doing for many years,' writes Rebecca Jeschke. 'Worse, it could create a whole new layer of ongoing costs for podcasters and their listeners.' To bust this patent, EFF is looking for additional 'prior art' — evidence that the podcasting methods described in the patent were already in use (PDF) before November 19, 2003. 'In particular, we're looking for written descriptions of methods that allow a user to download pre-programmed episodic media like audio files or video files from a remote publisher, with the download occurring after the user subscribes to the episodes, and with the user continuing to automatically receive new episodes.'"

5 of 150 comments (clear)

  1. Not exactly related to the patent by Brazilian+Geek · · Score: 3, Informative

    But weren't there a few guys, back in 1999 that used to have a pretty neat weekly show. Back then I don't think they were called podcasts but I do remember that the shows were really fun.

    Anyway, I found a link to it on Wikipedia but I'm sure there are more links around.

    It was called Geeks in Space, or something like that, and the site's admins that used to make the show was called flashdot, dashdot, slashdort or something like that.

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  2. en.swpat.org/wiki/VoloMedia's_podcasting_patent by H4x0r+Jim+Duggan · · Score: 4, Informative
    More info on swpat.org:
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  3. Wikipedia by Minupla · · Score: 4, Informative

    Wikipedia has a whole section of prior art in their history section of the podcasting article here

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  4. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 3, Informative

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  5. Claim 1, not that anyone will read it by sir_eccles · · Score: 3, Informative

    1. A method for providing episodic media, the method comprising:
    - providing a user with access to a channel dedicated to episodic media, wherein the episodic media provided over the channel is pre-defined into one or more episodes by a remote publisher of the episodic media;
    - receiving a subscription request to the channel dedicated to the episodic media from the user;
    - automatically downloading updated episodic media associated with the channel dedicated to the episodic media to a computing device associated with the user in accordance with the subscription request upon availability of the updated episodic media, the automatic download occurring without further user interaction; and
    - providing the user with: an indication of a maximum available channel depth, the channel depth indicating a size of episodic media yet to be downloaded from the channel and size of episodic media already downloaded from the channel, the channel depth being specified in playtime or storage resources, and the ability to modify the channel depth by deleting selected episodic media content, thereby overriding the previously configured channel depth.